6 is the only game in the series that doesn't feel dated or fucking gay as hell. 8 thru 10 are a slow spiral further down the gayness rainbow to arrive at final fantasy 12: not totally gay (even if the shirtless vest wearing teenage boy doesn't help), but it's like playing an MMO by yourself, that is: boring.

And I heard that Final Fantasy 11 is impossible to play by yourself which means the makers don't know how the internet works. Or humanity, for that matter.

I liked stuff about XII and it wasn't as shitty as 8-10, and Balthazar was a pretty cool character. When I read that he was supposed to be the central figure in the game and the main player character, and Van was added later, I just had to wonder when FF is going to get rid of the goddamn blonde, angsty, emotional, teenage hero.

I liked Ivalice more than any of the past FF worlds since the super nintendo days, that's for sure. The whole style was nice, but the combat system was kind of weird and...I dunno. I got bored. I couldn't follow the story very well, either.

this reminds me, actually... i still haven't beaten this goddamn game. i think i'm close to the end. but when i realized just how much stuff i missed, i quit playing it after 3 months SOLID of daily adventure. i should really just get it over with already.

are you kidding brendan? 12 was kindof innovative but so so goddamn bland and dull. how can you say you preferred the totally drab, vacuous and one-flavour ivalice when up until FFX all the games had beautifully rendered and extremely imaginative painted backdrops? plus, the worst offenders location-wise were the dungeons: from the miriam shrine, the tomb of the king, the caves; all just vast, mammoth-scale symmetrical emptiness with no kind of structural significance or points of interest. so so fucking boring and unimaginative.

and the puzzles were shit too. clue: "touch the three stones to open the door". "you have solved the puzzle."

12's character design was awesome as usual but the thing that really sucked about this game is that i didn't feel convinced by the party as a team, they had little sense of camaraderie as the characters in 6-10 did. yeah ashe and fran are insanely fucking hot and balthier is a badass james bond type but Basch is the most boring sandal-wearing fucker in any FF to date and vaan/penelo are totally annoying token kiddy types. they only created vaan for the sake of cashing in on Tidus's unwarranted boyband popularity with the teenybopper girl gamers. and the plot was fucking atrocious, terrible supporting characters and villains. the judges were seriously overhyped, they looked scary as fuck but were really a bunch of pansies with little significance to the plot, such poor character development there. plus, who wants to save some boring-ass city in the desert when i could play 6,7,8,9 and save the whole goddamn universe from villains and disasters that actually live up to the hype?

only cool things about 12: the mark-hunting sidequest and the mist chain thing where you could link your limit breaks together; although, everybody becomes utterly dependent on these to beat the bosses so they become about as essential the GF summons were in 8. they're the only thing that does any real damage, and the damage it DOES do almost always kills the bosses immediately, so there was no real point engaging with them in the first place.

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i never used the quickenings. and you don't need to use the GFs in viii. you don't even need to level in that game

anyway i enjoyed xii's story up until the end – i liked the political setting a lot, but the wheels started falling off when those god things arrived on the scene. square took a good story and basically took a big dump on it

i never used the quickenings. and you don't need to use the GFs in viii. you don't even need to level in that game

anyway i enjoyed xii's story up until the end – i liked the political setting a lot, but the wheels started falling off when those god things arrived on the scene. square took a good story and basically took a big dump on it

FFXII sucked. Overhyped, everyone had to wait too long for it, and the story was really bad. Also it feels like a broken MMO.

plus, the worst offenders location-wise were the dungeons: from the miriam shrine, the tomb of the king, the caves; all just vast, mammoth-scale symmetrical emptiness with no kind of structural significance or points of interest. so so fucking boring and unimaginative.

I will agree with this in general.

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Originally Posted by ???

vaan/penelo are totally annoying token kiddy types

Worst characters in FF for a while, true.

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horrendous game and a waste of good ashe booty

I have never ever gotten into the whole animated/CGI characters. However Ashe was a fairly "attractive" graphic - but her constant breathing noises and crap were just terrible.

xii's story was easily the subtlest of any of the FFs i've played, and if its final third hadn't derailed it'd easily be my favourite. as it stands, viii wins out, and it has its fair share of idiocy

i have always appreciated XII's attempt at developing a subtle plot based on intrigue rather than the usual oh-shit-time-to-save-the-world melodrama of the other games. but the execution was risible. vayne was one of the most one-dimensional, uninspired villains i have seen in any game to date, final fantasy or otherwise. and as i mentioned before, the judges were very poorly developed characters that earned neither one's sympathy nor one's apathy. the head judge was slightly sympathetic for having to kill the female one but that whole episode just seemed ridiculous to begin with. the script was awful.

also, the game planning in general was just mediocre beyond belief. i found the first two or three hours of the game almost excruciatingly slow, and it didn't pick up much even after that. i had fun hunting down a couple of the marks and dispatching thousands upon thousands of those sandpeople at the oil-rig place, but my god what a complete dirge from start to finish.

xii's story was easily the subtlest of any of the FFs i've played, and if its final third hadn't derailed it'd easily be my favourite. as it stands, viii wins out, and it has its fair share of idiocy

I like VII best. Sure, the translation was awful, but it's a jrpg. None of them are novels and I liked how FFVII combined its atmosphere/feel with story. Both it and Chrono Trigger are unique in that regard, no other games have ever really had stories (or should I say, experiences) like that.

XII falls apart so bad at the end (as you even admit to) that I can't believe you even bother to defend it. The story sucks and so do the characters. Vaan is literally the worst main character in any Final Fantasy. He does nothing. I have no idea what Square-Enix was thinking.

Hype and release date by themselves have nothing to do with anything usually, but it took over 5 years to get FFXII. All we got was a crappy abandoned story, crappy abandoned gameplay and shitty characters. Totally not worth the wait. Pick up Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, you can thank me later.

FFXIII will probably take at least two years to come out. If X-2 and XII are an indication, it's going to suck. Mistwalker bailed me out this gen, thankfully

I like VII best. Sure, the translation was awful, but it's a jrpg. None of them are novels and I liked how FFVII combined its atmosphere/feel with story. Both it and Chrono Trigger are unique in that regard, no other games have ever really had stories (or should I say, experiences) like that.

have you even played 6/8/9? those are easily as good as 7. i think 7 is the most popular partly cause it has the most balanced gameplay but the stories in 6/8/9 are just breathtakingly awesome and 8/9 have the best characterisation and scripting of any RPGs to date. i guess it partly depends on how well you can read but the way the dialogue reflects the characters in 8/9 is really compelling. in 7, everyone sounds fairily robotic except for barret who gets his obvious Mr.T lines every five minutes

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Quote:

Originally Posted by ???

i have always appreciated XII's attempt at developing a subtle plot based on intrigue rather than the usual oh-shit-time-to-save-the-world melodrama of the other games. but the execution was risible. vayne was one of the most one-dimensional, uninspired villains i have seen in any game to date, final fantasy or otherwise. and as i mentioned before, the judges were very poorly developed characters that earned neither one's sympathy nor one's apathy. the head judge was slightly sympathetic for having to kill the female one but that whole episode just seemed ridiculous to begin with. the script was awful.

also, the game planning in general was just mediocre beyond belief. i found the first two or three hours of the game almost excruciatingly slow, and it didn't pick up much even after that. i had fun hunting down a couple of the marks and dispatching thousands upon thousands of those sandpeople at the oil-rig place, but my god what a complete dirge from start to finish.

i found it to be a pretty quick game actually (provided you use the gambit system to its full potential). if you insist on manually inputting all your commands it'd be incredibly tedious, especially given that the game annoyingly makes you backtrack through a number of locations.

i think the problem with vayne and the judges is pretty much to do with a lack of elaboration. i didn't think vayne was one-dimensional (he seemed to have complex motives and was hardly a stock bad guy); he was simply kept at arm's length for the entire game. i thought the judges were there more as the personification of the empire's power/corruption so i wasn't too bothered about them. having said that i almost stopped playing the game early on when "it wasn't me it was my identical twin brother" became central to the plot. fucking stupid

i agree with you john. but i think probably the greatest fault in the ps2 generation final fantasies hasn't been so much the experimentation with the next-gen technology and trying to break away from the old format (though i don't think it'll ever be topped) but moreso just the way there has been so much emphasis put on sex appeal rather than gameplay and solid storytelling. clearly square-enix are more interested now in marketing to disaffected teenyboppers rather than veteran rpg fans who actually want a quality game rather than just a ragtag band of sexy misfits to gawp at.

have you even played 6/8/9? those are easily as good as 7. i think 7 is the most popular partly cause it has the most balanced gameplay but the stories in 6/8/9 are just breathtakingly awesome and 8/9 have the best characterisation and scripting of any RPGs to date. i guess it partly depends on how well you can read but the way the dialogue reflects the characters in 8/9 is really compelling. in 7, everyone sounds fairily robotic except for barret who gets his obvious Mr.T lines every five minutes

VI is overrated... it's not that great.

VIII does indeed have a good story, it just gets too sappy and romantic at times. Faye Wong makes me cringe. I did love the whole time compression aspect and all, though. There's a million ways to interpret the end of the story because they left it so open which is always fun. The Draw system was too redundant, and oh man, Junction was SO EASY to abuse. FFVIII is like the easiest FF ever.